Late summer is one of my favorite foodie times of the year. My local farmer’s market is overflowing with a variety of colors and flavors, and my little organic garden is lush and happy (although I do find I am sharing more and more of my harvest with little critters that like to help themselves despite my fence!) I’m cooking with fresh herbs every day, and greens like kale, bok choy and beet greens are regular staples in my diet. I’m extra excited about my butternut squash, which I’m growing for the first time. It’s such a thrill to see the squash getting bigger! And you simply can’t beat fresh-from-the-garden heirloom NJ tomatoes!

Baby squash!

This is also that time of year when everyone seems to have an over-abundance of summer squash. This recipe was born of that, and has become one of my favorites. It’s a riff on pasta, but much lighter. Enjoy it on its own or as a side dish. I hope you love it as much as I do!

I made this dish in the Pampered Chef 4-quart Rockcrok Dutch Oven that my wonderful Pampered Chef consultant Kathy Yellets sent me. (Disclosure: I was sent a free product for this review by an independent Pampered Chef consultant. I have worked for Pampered Chef corporate in the past in a consulting capacity, but corporate was not involved with this review. Although I was provided with a free product, all opinions expressed here are my own.)

When I received the Rockcrok and read about it, I was pretty excited. It can go on the stovetop, in the oven, in the microwave (with no plastic BPA worries!) and even on the grill (it can take the heat up to 752 degrees)! I love the fact that you can start a dish on the stovetop and then finish it in the oven without transferring pots. I found that it heats really evenly, too, which makes me think it will be great for a Korean dish I love called Bibimbop. That dish traditionally calls for a clay pot which holds the heat and crisps the bottom of the rice, which this pot should do well. This pot is definitely one I find I use almost everyday, because it’s so versatile.

So I am excited to share with you this recipe today. Please note that the variety of veggies and amounts below are suggestions. Feel free to adapt this to whatever veggies you have on hand, in whatever amounts. It’s delicious no matter how you make it!

You’ll need to use a vegetable peeler to make thin slices of your zucchini, squash, pepper, and carrots. You’ll also want to chop your kale into bite-sized pieces.

Toast your walnuts while adding your onions and veggies to the Rockcrok. (I love how the steam looks in this picture!)

When the veggies are pretty soft and cooked down, add your tomatoes and chopped rosemary, along with salt and pepper.

When the kale starts getting a little crispy, add the goat cheese and let it melt into the “noodles.” Top with some of the toasted walnuts.

Serve on a plate topped with additional goat cheese and walnuts. Enjoy!

Here’s the full recipe:

Summer Veggie “Noodles” with Walnuts and Goat CheeseServes 2 as a main dish or 4 as a side dish

Ingredients

1/4 cup chopped walnuts

2 Tbsp coconut oil (or olive oil)

1 medium zucchini

1 medium yellow summer squash

1-2 carrots

1 sweet red pepper

1 cup chopped kale

1 medium onion, chopped

1 cup red cherry tomatoes

1-2 oz goat cheese (to taste)

2 sprigs fresh rosemary, leaves chopped and stems removed

salt and pepper (to taste)

Here’s What to Do

Toast chopped walnuts in a small saucepan until fragrant and lightly browned. Set aside.

With a vegetable peeler, slice zucchini, summer squash, pepper and carrots into long thin strips.

Mince onions and chop kale.

In Rockcrok or large saucepan or frying pan, melt coconut oil over medium heat.

Add onions and saute for 3-4 minutes, until they begin to become transparent.

Add veggie “noodles” and saute lightly for about 3 minutes.

Add chopped kale, along with chopped rosemary, salt and pepper, and continue to cook and stir for 5-7 minutes, or until kale begins to look a little crispy.

Add cherry tomatoes and stir for another minute.

Add goat cheese and half of your toasted walnuts, and cook and stir until goat cheese melts into noodles.

Remove to serving platter and top with additional goat cheese and toasted walnuts.

I try to eat vegetables at every meal, in order to get 7-9 servings of vegetables a day. I’ve found it’s done dramatic things for my health and waistline. When it was summer, it was easy to find a variety of vegetables at the Farmer’s Market. But now that it’s winter, my options that are organic and not imported are a lot fewer. So I’ve been doing a lot of winter squash and kale.

I’ve been on a big kale and butternut squash kick recently. I eat both nearly every day in a variety of ways. Green smoothies, soup, stir fries, you name it. But one of my absolute favorite ways to enjoy both is in this hearty dish that I make for breakfast a few times per week.

This dish also uses cranberries, which I stock up on during the holidays and keep in the freezer. I love the way the cranberries in this dish complement the earthy flavors. So often we think of cranberry as sweet, since we typically add so much sugar to them. But in this dish the tangy, sour flavor of the cranberry adds a lot.

I’ve now been gluten-free since April, and have lost 2 sizes since I made the switch. I’ve experimented with lots of gluten-free cooking and baking, and have found a lot of recipes that I really like. The toughest thing, though, is gluten-free baking. Getting the right mix of flours to simulate wheat has been tricky at best, with each combination “almost” there, but not quite. I’ve enjoyed being able to make baguettes and such, but I’m still working on a recipe that is, in my opinion, ideal.

Now that the holidays are here, I was wondering how I was going to make Christmas cookies. Every year my kids and I have made sugar cookies…you know, the kind you roll out and decorate. We always leave some out for Santa. And I wanted to find a batch this year that we could all eat, that tasted as good as I remember.

Friends, I’ve done it. I found the perfect recipe. This is one that we will make forever. I hope your family enjoys it as much as we do. (Note that this recipe is not refined sugar-free. Although I usually cook without refined sugar, this recipe is an exception.)

It starts with an all-purpose gluten free flour mix I developed. Make this first, and you can use it in other recipes as well.

Jen’s Gluten-Free Pastry Flour Mix

1 cup brown rice flour

1 cup sorghum flour

1 cup sweet rice flour

1 cup tapioca flour

1/2 cup dry milk

1 tsp xanthan gum

Combine all ingredients in an airtight container, and store in the refrigerator.

The Best Gluten Free Christmas Sugar Cookie Recipe

Ingredients:

1 cup (2 sticks) organic unsalted butter, softened

1/2 cup organic pure cane sugar

1 large organic egg, room temperature

1 Tbsp vanilla extract

2 cups Jen’s Gluten-Free Pastry Flour Mix

1 cup blanched almond flour (Honeyville brand is best)

1 tsp baking powder

1/2 tsp salt

Here’s What to Do:

In a large bowl, cream together the butter and sugar until light and fluffy using a hand or stand mixer.

Add the egg and vanilla, mixing until fully incorporated.

In a separate bowl, combine the flours, baking powder and salt.

Add flour mixture to the butter mixture and blend on low until fully combined.

Divide the dough into 2 disks, wrap in plastic and refrigerate for about an hour or until firm.

Preheat oven to 350° F.

Take dough out of refrigerator and place on a (gluten-free!) floured surface. (Use the all-purpose mix, or rice or tapioca flour.)

Slowly roll out the dough to about 1/4″ thick, repairing cracks as they appear. The key here is to go slowly.

Use cookie cutters to cut dough into desired shapes, and place on parchment paper covered cookie sheets. Decorate as desired.

Bake in preheated oven for 10-12 minutes, just until bottoms are starting to brown. Do not overbake.

Remove from oven and allow to cool. Enjoy!

Here a batch my kids made. Poor arm-less cookie man. :)

What kind of cookies do you like to make with your kids? How have you adapted your traditions to a gluten-free lifestyle? Would love to read your thoughts in the comments below!

I’m trying to reduce the amount of wheat I send in my kids’ lunches. While I’ve always tried to include milk and a vegetable, reducing the wheat is even more of a challenge, because it affects the easy sandwich. While I can use gluten free bread, I’m also trying to be a bit more creative and up the protein quotient.

Here are the parameters I set when packing school lunches:

No peanuts (although my kids aren’t allergic, there are kids in their school with life-threatening allergies to peanuts and I don’t believe that peanuts have any place in schools where this is the case.)

Must include milk

Must include a vegetable and a fruit

Must include a protein

Something sweet is nice to end the meal with

I have plastic sandwich boxes for each of the kids (no waste) and last year I purchased silicon cupcake cups by Wilton that fit inside the sandwich boxes and serve as flexible partitions for various foods. I also have a few convenience products for the sweet/fruit component of my kids’ lunches, but they are all organic and pure.

Sometimes I don’t have time to make lunch. And my kids think these GoPicnic gluten free lunch boxes are a real treat. They only get them for special occasions (they’re $4 a pop). I also give them a choice between buying pizza lunch at school on Fridays or a GoPicnic box. They choose this about 50% of the time. These are their favorite flavors:

Now obviously some of these lunches (but not all!) require some forethought. I tend to cook up a large batch of pumpkin waffles or french toast and chicken nuggets on the weekend, and freeze some for lunches for the week. Pizza bagels can be made in the toaster oven in the morning.

It’s the beginning of October. That means my kids are eagerly making their plans for the sugarfest more commonly known as Halloween. I live on a street that sees a LOT of kids on the 31st of October, and most houses are well stocked.

When the kids come home with their loot, we carefully ration it out so that they don’t overload in a couple of days, but rather make it last for months. But even so, there’s a part of me (the part that doesn’t buy candy for my kids) that doesn’t really want to hand out candy. I don’t want it in my house, and the kids in the neighborhood are going to get more than enough of it.

But I still want to participate in the fun, and I also don’t want my kids to have to deal with the reputation of being the house that hands out toothbrushes. So here are some suggestions for things you can hand out on Halloween that aren’t candy, but also aren’t lame, so your kids can show their faces in school the next day.

Helium balloons. I still remember the one house we always tried to hit in our neighborhood on Halloween when I was a kid. They rented a big helium tank and handed out black and orange helium-filled balloons. A glance into their house showed that they had balloons floating all over their living room. And you could tell every kid that had been there because they all had their balloon while they were trick or treating in the rest of the neighborhood. What a fun idea!

Glow novelties. This is one I’ve done a few times, and it’s always a hit with the little kids, as well as the teenagers! I buy a bulk pack of glow necklaces, bracelets, or whatever I can find, and crack them so they glow right before trick or treating begins. I’ve even seen glow in the dark vampire fangs! It’s especially nice at night, and gives a little more safety to kids as they wander the streets after dark.

Organic fruit shreds. Now I don’t mean organic sugar sweetened gummies. But the ones that are basically organic fruit puree and nothing else added rank right up there with handing out gummy bears, in my opinion. I like this kind.

Bubbles. Now this may go over better with little kids than big kids. But those little bottles of bubbles (same size they use at weddings) can be tons of fun.

Coins. There’s one house I know of where they save up their loose change all year, and then hand it out at Halloween. Now this isn’t one you can use for self-serve. But if you’re willing to dole it out to each goblin at your door, this is always a good one. And if nothing else, you’re prepared for the kids that trick or treat for UNICEF.

Individual sized microwave popcorn. Now I’m a little bit torn on this one, because I’m not super fond of all the chemicals in microwave popcorn, not to mention the fact that corn in the US is genetically modified. But if you’re trying to avoid sugar, we’ve done this in the past and it’s been well-received.

What do you hand out at Halloween? Do you have additional suggestions? Please share them in the comments below!

Occasionally I like to have a treat waiting for my kids when they get off the school bus. I don’t think there’s much more inviting than walking into the house after a long day and smelling fresh-baked cookies coming out of the oven.

But with this new eating plan, I’ve been trying to cut back on the wheat and sugar for them, as well as me. That makes cookie baking a bit more challenging.

I’ve been working on this cookie recipe for a while. At first, they were too soft…almost like cake. But I finally perfected it. They’re not TOO sweet, have a nice crunch, and are absolutely delicious. I hope your kids enjoy them as much as mine do!

My 3 kids are adopted from Korea. In learning about the culture as we prepared to adopt, I fell in love with the country, as well as the food. Korean barbeque (Bulgogi) is phenomenal, and kimchi is a spicy, addictive condiment that I love. (I even made kimchi once or twice…a process that takes several days…and my sweet son prefers mine to anyone else’s…good boy!) But one other dish I really enjoy is japchae, which is a stir-fried noodle dish made with sweet potato noodles.

The best japchae I ever had was cooked by my son’s foster mother in Korea. When we went to her apartment to meet our new son for the first time (he was 2) she had a huge spread of traditional Korean food. It was SO delicious!

I’ve made japchae in the past, but I always messed up a bit with the sweet potato noodles, which can easily be overcooked. However recently, I finally took the plunge and ordered some kelp noodles. I had been reading about them on various gluten-free food blogs, and I was curious. The reviews for them on the Amazon product page were really positive. They are not a grain, but rather a sea vegetable. And there are only 18 calories in an entire package (6 calories per serving.) For real!

But the best part is that they are, of themselves, fairly tasteless. They take on the flavor of whatever they’re cooked with, but they retain the texture of a rice noodle. Plus they’re full of nutrition. They have more than 70 minerals, including potassium, magnesium, iron, calcium and iodine. They also contains enzymes, vitamins, trace elements, and more than 21 amino acids. It’s safe to say they’re really good for you.

So I decided to attempt japchae again, this time with kelp noodles. And it was perfect! It’s safe to say I’ll never go back to sweet potato noodles for this dish again.

1/2 cup shitake mushrooms, sliced (dried are great in this but you have to soak first, you can also use fresh)

1 cup baby spinach, chopped

1 organic cage-free egg, scrambled

Here’s What To Do

Rinse the kelp noodles in cold water.

Boil some water in a large pot, and add the kelp noodles. Cook for 5 minutes and then remove from heat. Let it sit in the hot water until you’re ready to use the noodles.

Meanwhile, combine 2 Tbsp tamari, 1 tsp sesame oil, 1 chopped clove of garlic, the ginger, 1/3 of the chopped green onion, and 1/2 of the sesame seeds in a small bowl.

Slice the chicken thighs into strips, and add to the tamari marinade. Let sit while you slice the carrots, mushrooms and spinach.

After all vegetables have been prepared, heat a tsp of sesame oil in a large frying pan, and add a little of the garlic. Add the chicken and all of its marinade, and stir fry until the meat is cooked through, about 5 minutes.

Remove the meat from the pan and put on a plate.

In the same pan, add another tsp of sesame oil and some garlic, and cook the carrot strips until softened, but still with a bit of crunch left.

Remove the carrots from the pan and put on the plate with the meat.

In the same pan, add another tsp of sesame oil and some garlic, and cook the mushrooms until softened, about 2 minutes.

Remove the mushrooms from the pan and put on the plate with the meat and carrots.

In the same pan, add a bit more sesame oil and garlic, and toss in the spinach. Cook for a minute or so, until wilted.

Remove the spinach from the pan and put on the plate with the meat and vegetables.

Add enough sesame oil to coat the bottom of the pan, and then add the scrambled egg. Tilt the pan to cover the bottom with egg, and allow it to cook in a thin sheet.

When the egg is almost done, use a spatula to break it up into bite sized pieces, and then remove the egg to the plate with the meat and vegetables.

Drain the kelp noodles.

Add another tablespoon of sesame oil and the remaining garlic to the pan, and then add the kelp noodles. Stir-fry for 2 minutes to get up all the pan flavors that have accumulated into the noodles.

Dump the plate of meat, vegetables and egg on top of the noodles, along with the remaining green onion, and stir fry it all together for another 2-3 minutes.

Taste and add another Tbsp of tamari if the flavor needs it.

Sprinkle the top with the remaining sesame seeds, and serve!

Hungry yet?

Have you tried kelp noodles? What did you think of them? How do you like to prepare them? Would love to read your thoughts in the comments below!

About Me

Jennifer Fong is a social media and direct sales consultant who also happens to love good wine and great food. Recently adopting a gluten and refined sugar-free lifestyle, she blogs about her favorite recipes and strategies for making it all work. She also blogs for work at http://jenfongspeaks.com, sharing social media strategies for direct sellers.